Sunday, December 14, 2014

A Witness and a Voice (a sermon for December 14th on John 1:6-9, 19-28)

I’m not sure which
school for aspiring politicians John the Baptist had attended, but he sure had
a lot to learn about how to grab the limelight. We can imagine him
participating in a modern election and being questioned by journalists at a
press conference:

“So, John, are you the one we’ve been waiting for,
the one who will defend our nation from terrorists and keep our streets safe
from crime?”

“I am not”.

“Oh. Well, then, are you the one who who’ll
solve the problem of poverty, who will make our society prosperous again, and
do away with excessive taxation?”

“I am not”.

“Ah” (awkward silence). “Well, are you the one
who will bring our nation back to traditional values? Are you the one who’ll
remind us that we’re a Christian country, and enforce Christian standards in
government?”

“I am not”.

“Well, John, what exactly are you planning to do if we vote for you?”

“Voting for me isn’t important. I’m the voice
of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’. He’s
the one you really should be voting for; I’m just here to point you to him.
He’s so much greater than me that I’m not even worthy to kneel down and tie his
shoes for him”.

“Ah. So where’s his press conference, then?”

Now you might
think this is a far-fetched comparison; after all, John was a prophet and a
preacher, not a politician. But the truth is, that distinction would have been
lost on the Old Testament prophets. They lived in a world in which religion and
politics were completely intertwined, and they regularly meddled with issues
like caring for the poor and needy, and trusting in God rather than wise
foreign policy.

The Collect for
the Second Sunday in Advent, which we used last Sunday, goes like this:

Almighty God, who
sent your servant John the Baptist to prepare your people to welcome the
Messiah, inspire us, the ministers and stewards of your truth, to turn our
disobedient hearts to you, that when the Christ shall come again to be our
judge, we may stand with confidence before his glory; who is alive and reigns
with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Notice the royal
language in that Collect: ‘to prepare your people to welcome the Messiah… when the Christ shall come to be our judge’. ‘Messiah’ is a Hebrew word,
‘Christ’ is Greek, but they both mean the same thing: ‘the anointed one’. It
was the custom to anoint kings with olive oil at their coronations as a sign of
God’s power coming down on them to equip them for their role, so in a sense
every king of Israel was a ‘messiah’. But like us, the Israelites got tired of
crooked politicians who only ruled for their own benefit; they looked back to
what they saw as the golden age, when David had been their king; they longed
for the day when God would send them another king like him, who would rule in
righteousness and justice, care for the poor and needy, defend Israel from
their enemies, and truly set up the Kingdom of God on earth. This king would
truly be ‘the Messiah’.

What were their
expectations around his coming? It would be a day when the nations of the world
would turn to the God of Israel and come streaming to Jerusalem to learn to
live by his laws - a day when nations would beat their swords into ploughshares
and there would be no more studying the arts of war - a day when the lion would
lie down with the lamb – in other words, natural enemies, like Israel and
Assyria, would be reconciled and live together in peace. Israel would be free
from tyrants, the land would enjoy peace and prosperity, and orphans and widows
and marginalized people would be safe under the Lord’s just and loving rule.

It would also be
a year of Jubilee. The Torah says quite clearly that every fiftieth year, there
is to be a Year of Jubilee in Israel: all debts are to be forgiven, all slaves
set free, and – most importantly – all land is to revert to its original
owners. The goal of this was to prevent one family accumulating great wealth at
the expense of another; when God originally distributed the land, he did it
equally, and every fifty years, it was to become equal again. Of course, you
can guess that those who were at the top of the power structures in Israel did
not like this law, and in fact there is no evidence that it was ever followed.
But it was right there in the Law of Moses, and the prophets reminded people of
it regularly. It was right there in our Old Testament reading for this morning.
Let me remind you of it:

‘The spirit of the
Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring
good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty
to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the
Lord’s favour, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn’
(Isaiah 61:1-2).

Did you hear it?
‘To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’. That’s the year of Jubilee, the
year when the captives are to be set free and the oppressed are to be liberated.

It was an attractive
and compelling vision; who wouldn’t vote for a politician who promised all
that! No wonder the crowds were so excited when John the Baptist announced,
‘the Kingdom of God is at hand’! The easiest way to get followers in the time
of Jesus was to start using this kind of language. It was such a tempting way
to gain power; you can be sure that if someone in those days was asked, ‘Are
you the Messiah?” it would be rather unusual for them to say, “No”!

Even today, of
course, there is no shortage of Messianic candidates for political office,
people who are sure they’re on a mission from God to save the world. Our
politicians tend to use Messianic language at election time, and we have Messianic
expectations of them. In fact, it would be hard to get elected these days without using that kind of language.
Just think about the kind of things that were said when Barack Obama was
elected as the first black president of the United States; King Arthur himself
couldn’t have measured up to that set
of expectations! And even in our quieter Canadian political climate, aspiring
governments on left and right constantly imply that if we vote for them,
Camelot is just around the corner, but if we vote for their opponents, it’s the
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!

So the first
thing John the Baptist wants us to know is this: “there’s only one Messiah, and I’m not him”. The writer of the
fourth gospel is very clever about how he uses language, and this is a good
example. In this Gospel, Jesus is always saying, “I am”. “I am the Good
Shepherd”, “I am the Light of the World”, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the
Life”, “Before Abraham was, I am”. People who were familiar with the Jewish
scriptures would have seen the significance of this right away; in the Old
Testament, the name of God is ‘Yahweh’, or traditionally ‘Jehovah’, which means,
“I am”.

But in the Gospel
of John, Jesus is the only one who uses this language; he’s the only one who
can say, “I am the Messiah”. Everyone else says, “I am not”. John the Baptist says,
“I am not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet”. The only one who is
qualified to be the true Messiah is Jesus.

That’s why Jesus
used that Old Testament reading from Isaiah as his text in his first sermon in
Nazareth. Do you remember it? Luke tells us that he stood up in the synagogue
in his hometown, the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him, and he
read these words:

“The Spirit of
the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the
blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour”.
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The
eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today
this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:16-21).

In other words, he
is the one who can truly say he has come to change the world.

Back in the 1970s
Bruce Cockburn wrote a song called ‘Laughter’. One of the verses went like
this:

Let’s hear a
laugh for the man of the worldwho thinks he can
make things work.Tried to build
the New Jerusalemand ended up with
New York.

The ‘man of the
world’ has always done that - tried
to build the Messianic Kingdom without the true Messiah – tried to build the
Kingdom of justice and peace by using injustice and war. The true Messiah is
too demanding, so we need to find someone else who’ll do the job in his place,
someone who won’t demand that we sell our possessions and give to the poor, or
love our enemies and pray for those who hate us. But it’s a very rare leader
who has the courage to say, “No, I’m not the one. Let me point you to the true Messiah, the one you really need to
be following; his way is the only way that’s really going to change the world’.

We Christians are
called to follow the example of John the Baptist: to insist that there is only
one Messiah, and it’s not us or any other earthly leader; it’s Jesus. John was
not the Messiah: he was a witness, and a voice. Look at what he says about
himself in today’s gospel reading; quoting from Isaiah 40, he says,

I am the voice of
one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’ (John
1:23).

Earlier on in the
chapter we read,

(John) came as a
witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He
himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light,
which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. (John 1:7-9).

John was a voice
crying out in the wilderness, and he was a witness to testify to the light of
the world, Jesus himself.

So we go back to
our collect for last Sunday: ‘Almighty God, who sent your servant John the
Baptist to prepare your people to welcome the Messiah’. That’s what we’re being
called to do this Advent, and every Advent: to welcome the true Messiah. We do
this in three ways.

First, we refuse to listen to false Messiahs
who propose alternative ways to find peace and happiness. The truth is that war
and politics won’t solve the problems of the world. Those problems will only be
solved by love in action, and that’s not a political program, it’s a program of
transformation that asks every one of us to change our hearts toward God and
our neighbours. That’s what Jesus taught us.

At this time of
year we are bombarded by the voices of economic messiahs telling us to buy,
buy, buy, because that’s the way to be happy. But it’s our role as Christians
to say ‘no’ to this enormous commercial hoopla. This is not the way Jesus
taught us! How did we get the idea that the way to celebrate the birth of the
one who told us to sell our possessions and give to the poor was to go out and
participate in an annual festival of extravagance and greed?

So we refuse to
listen to these false Messiahs. Secondly,
we give our obedience to the true Messiah, Jesus. By his life and teaching,
he has shone a brilliant light into the darkness of the world. Our role as his
followers is to let that light transform us, because the same Jesus who said “I
am the light of the world” also said to his followers “You are the light of the world”. He taught us to quit concentrating
on things, and to seek first the
Kingdom of God instead. He taught us to forgive those who sin against us, love
our enemies and pray for them. He taught us to live simple lives with only a
few possessions, and to give generously to the needy. He taught us to speak the
truth, keep our promises, love God with all our hearts and be a neighbour to
all in need. This is the program for us disciples of Jesus. To become a
Christian is to enrol in a school of discipleship. The gospels, and especially
the Sermon on the Mount, give us the curriculum. Do you think there’s enough
there for us to work on? I think there is!

So we refuse to
listen to false Messiahs, and we give our obedience to the true Messiah.
Lastly, like John the Baptist, we give
our witness about Jesus to others.

He came as a
witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He
himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light,
which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. (John 1:7-9).

My witness to you
today is that the only way I can make sense of life in this crazy world is to
follow Jesus. In his words and his example, I find the light of God. And so I
want to share his story with others and encourage them to come to his light as
well. That’s my role as a disciple of Jesus. Jesus says, “Follow me, and I will
send you out to fish for people”. The first part, ‘follow me’, leads inevitably
to the second part, fishing for people; it’s an integral part of being a
follower of Jesus.

I am not
the Messiah, neither are you, and neither is the Church. The only Messiah is
Jesus. So let’s give our allegiance to him, live by his light, and spread it to
others. Amen.